Gisteren een groep jongelui rondgeleid in de Ieperse binnenstad en op de stadswallen op zoek naar de sporen van de 'Grote Oorlog'. Bij de Menenpoort kon ik het niet natuurlijk niet nalaten om even 'On passing the New Menin Gate' van 'oorlogsheld' en pacifist Siegfried Sassoon te reciteren:

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
the unheroic dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,-
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
as these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.